Re: I don't think Moriarty is alive

I admit I don't know how Moriarty could have faked his death given the gun-in-mouth we saw, but his REASON for shooting himself just strikes me as so crazy that it's almost enough to make me believe he didn't really.

Re: I don't think Moriarty is alive

I think that the fact that Anderson and the EH woman's theories have differing views on Moriarty's end (Anderson has him dead while she has him alive) means that Moriarty's fate isn't public knowledge. That of course doesn't mean that Mycroft didn't step in and provide a coverup.

Re: I don't think Moriarty is alive

I agree, to me moriarty shot himself so that he could destroy sherlock, but would he do that? If he is really selfish would he have really resorted to killing himself just for sherlock, who then faked his death?!

Re: I don't think Moriarty is alive

My apologies to the members who already read my post about Moriarty's fake suicide on the TRF thread concerning the rooftop scene. This is actually an altered version with several differences.

I’ve become convinced that Moriarty faked his death as the last brilliant step in his scheme to coerce Sherlock into committing suicide in a desperate effort to save his friends from the snipers. If you carefully watch the scene in which Moriarty shoots himself you’ll notice two very interesting things.

(1) Sherlock did not actually see the gun fire, because he lurched backwards and closed his eyes for a moment when Moriarty stuck the gun in his mouth.

(2) Moriarty didn’t fall straight back and land hard on the rooftop, like a man who is dead before he hits the ground.

Watch closely and you’ll see that as Moriarty falls (and goes out of frame) he bends his knees and turns to his right, with his arm stretched towards the roof behind him to cushion his fall. In fact, it appears he actually landed on his butt before falling onto his back.

From twelve feet back, Sherlock stares at the motionless body while blood oozes onto the roof. However, I think the blood was actually from a bag taped to Moriarty’s back under his clothes, with a tube leading up to the edge of his collar.

But what about the gun that Moriarty fired right into his mouth? After all, Sherlock heard a loud bang, so the gun must have fired either a bullet or a blank, right?

I don’t think so. In fact . . . I don’t think the gun was even loaded. Here’s why.

Sherlock certainly heard a loud bang, but he was twelve feet away -- and the exact direction of a loud, sharp noise which occurs nearby is hard for our ears to pinpoint.

A good old M-80 firecracker (or it’s equivalent) going off in front of Sherlock within fifteen feet would have sounded about the same as a shot from Moriarty’s gun. And if the explosion occurred several feet directly behind Moriarty, Sherlock would naturally think the gun was the source of the noise.

(I'm not suggesting an M-80 was actually used. )

What if a moderately-sized, remotely-detonated explosive had been planted under the ledge of this small structure, which was located directly behind Moriarty when he “shot” himself?

You can see the same structure (distorted by the fisheye lens) on the far right in the picture below. Sherlock comes out of a door further to the right and walks past it.

Moriarty must have had an accomplice in the building across the street (the same one the sniper was in, but on a higher floor so he could see the roof) with binoculars and a remote device, ready to blow the little bomb when Moriarty put the gun in his mouth.

So, let’s recap this wacky theory.

Moriarty knows Sherlock won’t kill himself unless he believes Moriarty is dead and unable to call off the snipers. An accomplice nearby sets off a small, hidden charge several feet behind Moriarty when the accomplice sees Moriarty place the unloaded gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.

Sherlock recoils at the sight of the gun in Moriarty’s mouth, just six inches from his own face, and he lunges ten feet backwards.

Bang!

Moriarty falls down quickly and plays dead. He hopes the fish-eyed stare and the spreading pool of blood will convince Sherlock not to look too closely.

Sherlock finds himself staring in shock at the body of his nemesis and realizing he absolute must jump to save his three friends from the snipers.

Moriarty’s plan succeeds . . . sort of. He doesn’t know that Sherlock has also planned to fake his own suicide. Even after Sherlock jumps and Moriarty gets up, walks casually over to the ledge, and looks down to gloat a little, he sees Sherlock looking just as dead as Moriarty did a moment ago. The ground crew has quickly set up the scene by splashing blood around and hiding the fireman’s safety net that caught Sherlock.

Sherlock’s plan was designed to be quick and simple -- not that time-consuming mess he described to Anderson. That's the biggest reason not to believe a word of that discription of the hoax. Anderson himself even commented that it would take too long!

The beauty of this whole idea is that it presents Moriarty as a cunning genius, rather than a suicidal maniac. Instead of Moriarty suddenly doing something stupid, illogical, and spontaneous, he executes a brilliant, logical, and carefully planned strategy -- which would have worked perfectly if Sherlock's own plan hadn't save him!

Besides, it's funny as hell. In the space five minutes, both men have convinced each other that they committed suicide -- even though there both still alive! You gotta love that, really.

And what, you may ask, happened to Moriarty after Sherlock jumped? Well, he expected to walk right out of the hospital, the victor of this final battle with the man he hates. But with dozens of Mycroft’s agents up and down the street, Moriarty was quickly apprehended – probably before he even left the roof!

I think Moriarty was imprisoned and interrogated more forcefully than before, including the use of drugs. The goal would be to extract useful info about his worldwide crime organization. Mycroft sent the data to Sherlock, aiding him in his efforts to dismantle the crime web.

The real kicker is that Mycroft does not tell Sherlock that Moriarty is alive and being held in a secret facility. That's just the way Mycroft is. He loves to keep secrets.

But holding Moriarty in prison proves difficult, and he escapes. Sometime after that, we see this on all the TV’s in England.

If this is really what happened, Moffat and Gatliss aren't going to have to worry about the fans complaining that Sherlock's suicide hoax was too simple. When the fans learn what was actually going on that day at the hospital, they'll be amazed -- espeically if Mycroft does the explaining . . . and it's the first time Sherlock finds out he was tricked by Moriarty's own suicide hoax!

Good lord, what a mental image! I can just see Sherlock's stunned expression!

Last edited by Bruce Cook (July 5, 2014 10:50 pm)

A good debate is like a fencing match — you don't have to win to get a good workout.

Re: I don't think Moriarty is alive

Congratulations. You just made someone who swore she'd never watch that episode ever again cue up the rooftop scene. You're right about the way Moriarty falls! Very unrealistic. Compare that to Sherlock's fall in HLV, and he wasn't even dead!

I still think that the fan theories are more brilliant than anything the writers are going to come up with, unfortunately. But dang, your theory has so much potential...

Mary

John: That's clever. So you scratch their backs and...Sherlock: Yes. And then disinfect myself.

Re: I don't think Moriarty is alive

The actor puts the barrel of the gun BESIDE his mouth for a very good reason...because a fake gun can kill you just as well as a real one from such a close distance and with all the soft tissue surrounding it. But in the show, Moriarty must have put it in his mouth, otherwise Sherlock would have noticed.

Plus, the very idea that those two fake-suizide at each other is simply riddiculous. I don't think that the writers will go there, but if they do, they will have ruined one of my favourite scenes forever.

Re: I don't think Moriarty is alive

Just a simple question: Then nobody of Mycroft´s people noticed that there wasn´t a dead body on the rooftop? Or they purposely left it there? I think the fact that nobody e.g. mentioned the body afterwards (and how they got rid of it) is a kind of proof that Moriarty is really dead. Don´t you think that Mycroft had said a word to his brother if the body had been missing? Moriarty is surely not back.

Re: I don't think Moriarty is alive

anjaH_alias wrote:

Just a simple question: Then nobody of Mycroft´s people noticed that there wasn´t a dead body on the rooftop? Or they purposely left it there? I think the fact that nobody e.g. mentioned the body afterwards (and how they got rid of it) is a kind of proof that Moriarty is really dead. Don´t you think that Mycroft had said a word to his brother if the body had been missing? Moriarty is surely not back.

I've said all this on other threads you've probably read, and apologize if this is just a repeat, but I couldn't resist adding it here, too, 'cause I'm just a tad bit obsessed on this subject.

Jim didn't die, he was arrested on the roof right after Sherlock jumped. That was the plan all along: fool the watching sniper across the street with Sherlock's fake suicide, then have Mycroft's agents rush out onto the roof and apprehend Moriarty before he looked over the edge and saw the "ground crew" stowing the fireman's net in the back of the laundry truck before it drove away.

The fact that Jim surprised Sherlock with his convincing fake suicide didn't change Sherlock's plan a bit. He still had to do his little act for the sniper, so that John, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade wouldn't be killed.

But yes, Jim body was whisked away after Sherlock jumped. He just happened to be alive when that happened. That's why the press has never said a single word about the death of "Richard Brook" on the roof after the "fake genius" took his own life.

If the media had known Richard Brook was laying on the same roof from which Sherlock jumped, the press would have reported it as the murder which Sherlock committed before he did the swan dive into the street! After all, poor Richard's brains have been blown out and a gun is clutched dramatically in his hand, placed there by the murderer for his own twisted reasons — instead being dropped as soon as Moriarty supposedly shot himself, which he didn't. Thus the gun is still in his hand as he posed for Sherlock.

Moriarty has been in custody ever since that time, but Mycroft didn't tell Sherlock, because Mycroft does stuff like that. Frequently. That's completely in character for Mycroft.

But at some point around the time of HLV, Moriarty escaped and created the nationwide "MIss me?" message that scared the piss out of all those government officials we saw -- who knew he was alive and thought he was still in custody.

I'm pretty sure The Abominable Bride is all about Sherlock struggling with his growing suspicions that Moriarty is not dead.

I could be wrong, folks, but I think good old Jim is alive and kickin'. Why else would they give us the shocker ending for HLV with the nationwide "miss me" message, and then devote the entire Christmas special to Sherlock's preoccupation with fake suicides and his growing fears caused by the possibility that Moriarty did NOT die?

The conclusion of the special shows Sherlock conquering his fear of Moriarty (with help from John) in the dream sequence by the falls, so that he'll be ready to take on Moriarty again in the real world!

Oh, and if anybody still wants to claim that bringing Moriarty back "isn't canon" -- I think we've thrown canon right out the window, way back when John's adoring wife was revealed to be a trained American operative with multiple kills to her credit! I'm pretty sure that wasn't in the novels, either.

Anybody agree with me?

A good debate is like a fencing match — you don't have to win to get a good workout.

Re: I don't think Moriarty is alive

besleybean wrote:

Is coming back from the dead a modern thing?! Tee He!

No, but hoaxes, cover-ups, conspiracies, and lying public officials is very NOW, very today, very modern.

Besides, the point is that Moriarty doesn't have to "come back from the dead", because he never went there in the first place! And I love the fact that he didn't fool anybody but Sherlock and the people close to Sherlock who found out about Moriarty's death only after Sherlock came back two years later and told them!

They couldn't have known prior to that, because Sherlock was "dead", and the news media never mentioned a word about Brook/Moriarty dying on the roof. Mycroft wouldn't have told them, because he was holding Moriarty in a cell, and there was no reason to bother lying about the "death" of Moriarty.

In TRF, Mycroft's men dashed out onto the roof, shouted "Freeze!", and didn't let Moriarty look down to see that he'd been tricked. Or maybe they did let him look after the thirty seconds it took to stow the fireman's safety net and let the laundry truck drive away, just so he would labor under the misconception that Sherlock was dead and gone.

So, Moriarty sat in a holding cell in MI-5 for two years and thought Sherlock was dead, while Sherlock roamed the world and took down Moriarty's web, all the while thinking Moriarty had killed himself!

Come on, guys, am I really the only one who thinks this scenario is a whole lot better than just, "Well, good luck with that." Bang . . .

Yawn. The end of the "Napoleon of crime." Don't sound dat smart to me, ya know?

Last edited by Bruce Cook (January 6, 2016 11:58 pm)

A good debate is like a fencing match — you don't have to win to get a good workout.